News
For the past six years, it has been my family's honor and privilege to have been a foster family in Eagle County. It is with mixed emotions that I will no longer be doing foster care.
Tim Eirich and Kelli Narans from the Rocky Mountain Children's Law Center stepped in when one of our foster children desperately needed them: “The Children's Law Center receives thousand of crisis calls each year from foster parents, relative caregivers, members of the community, legislators and even children in desperate need of their help. Sadly, due to their limited resources, they can intervene only in the most egregious cases.”
How deplorable is it that out of thousands of calls received each year, our county has had two such severe cases just in the past year that the Rocky Mountain Children's Law Center had to intervene to protect and save children in our community from our own Health and Human Services Department.
Although my decision to no longer be a foster parent is primarily due to the way some of the children in my home were treated, I also have been hurt by the perception that I was the difficult one when I found it extremely difficult to work with Healt to further the best interest of the children to whom I gave my home, love, time, energy and personal resources. I hope that with this letter, ECHealth and Human Services will come to realize how important it is to treat people with honesty, integrity and respect including foster parents and foster children.
My understanding is that part of the role of Health and Human Services and caseworkers, aids, supervisors, directors, etc., in regards to a child in foster care:
• Undertaking and writing up assessments which meet specified standards and time scales.
• Conducting interviews with individuals and their families to assess and review their situation.
• Organizing and managing support to enable individuals and their families to lead the fullest lives possible.
• Recommending and sometimes making decisions about the best course of action.
• Maintaining accurate records and preparing reports for legal action.
• Gving evidence in court.
However, my experience with Eagle County Health and Human Services has been this:
• The Eagle county Department of Health and Human Services does not have a policies and procedures manual.
n They are grossly insufficient with keeping records and documentation that is critical when going to court.
• Their court reports have not contained the complete facts and often had omissions so that an attempt at reunification could continue.
• They have no understanding of the rights and laws pertaining to foster parents and more importantly foster children.
• There is too much concern, resources, time and energy being offered to the adults who put these children in harm's way.
• And,Health and Human Services is more concerned to reunify a child with family than to put that child's needs and safety first. A quote from an Eagle County caseworker in a letter to the editor March 7, 2009: “As the caseworker, one of my biggest responsibilities is to do everything in my power to reunify children back with their parents.”
Some of our foster children have been fortunate to have a success story. Some of the children were reunified with their parents and, yes, it was the right thing. But unfortunately, the story is not the same for all of our children.
Health and Human Services did so many outrageously wrong things on so many levels with several of the children who were placed in our home.
I know first hand and with more than one of the children we have had in our home that reunification should have never even been considered. I know that many people, including Health and Human Services, feel that reunification should be paramount, so I ask that anyone who does not agree with my statement that reunification is not always the best solution to please become a foster parent and get back with me in a year or two after having some broken and battered children in your home.
Tell me how you feel about having to give a newborn child drugs so that she hopefully will be able to come off the drugs that were in her system when she was born so that she does not go through withdrawal but still has to have visitation with a parent still using drugs. I can tell you what it is like to have a 4-month-old come into my home in a body cast from the chest down with broken bones. The outrageous stench coming from the cast and having to go against a caseworker that stated that I did not have permission to go to All Children's Hospital to have the cast checked. I went anyway.
She had sores throughout her legs that were infected. A new cast was placed on her tiny body. She eventually went home to her parents.
You cannot begin to understand the heartache of seeing the overwhelmingly obvious neglect of a child with special needs, her feeding tube being removed because it was inconvenient for a parent. And yet, she gets returned to her family and was in “the system” for five and a half years.
Health and Human Services has called me difficult. If the department defines difficult as me fighting for the lives and rights of these children and making the department accountable and bringing these outrageous stories to light, then may I be the most difficult member of the Eagle County community. If the law states that reunification must be attempted in all cases, then the law needs to be changed.
To all of the foster children that have been in our home. You are often in my thoughts and always in my prayers. I am sorry for those of you I could not keep safe as you continue through a system that is so severely broken and clearly not working for many of you. Please continue to be strong and know that I will continue to fight to get you safe and keep you safe.
I would like thank my daughter, Chelsea, for welcoming the 13 children we have fostered into our home like brothers and sisters. I am so very proud of you. To my husband, Pete, we could not have done foster care if not for your dedication to your family, to your work and to the children in foster care. I love you both.
To everyone who calls Eagle County home, these children need our help. I will soon be calling on all of you to help me help them. Please consider being a foster parent for these children as difficult as it is and, if at all possible, please make a donation to the Rocky Mountain Children's Law Center. Our children need them to be able to continue their great work. Rocky Mountain Children's Law Center 1325South Colorado Blvd. #308 Denver, CO 80222. RockyMountainChildrensLawCenter.org
Kelly Coyle Paulsen
Tim Eirich and Kelli Narans from the Rocky Mountain Children's Law Center stepped in when one of our foster children desperately needed them: “The Children's Law Center receives thousand of crisis calls each year from foster parents, relative caregivers, members of the community, legislators and even children in desperate need of their help. Sadly, due to their limited resources, they can intervene only in the most egregious cases.”
How deplorable is it that out of thousands of calls received each year, our county has had two such severe cases just in the past year that the Rocky Mountain Children's Law Center had to intervene to protect and save children in our community from our own Health and Human Services Department.
Although my decision to no longer be a foster parent is primarily due to the way some of the children in my home were treated, I also have been hurt by the perception that I was the difficult one when I found it extremely difficult to work with Healt to further the best interest of the children to whom I gave my home, love, time, energy and personal resources. I hope that with this letter, ECHealth and Human Services will come to realize how important it is to treat people with honesty, integrity and respect including foster parents and foster children.
My understanding is that part of the role of Health and Human Services and caseworkers, aids, supervisors, directors, etc., in regards to a child in foster care:
• Undertaking and writing up assessments which meet specified standards and time scales.
• Conducting interviews with individuals and their families to assess and review their situation.
• Organizing and managing support to enable individuals and their families to lead the fullest lives possible.
• Recommending and sometimes making decisions about the best course of action.
• Maintaining accurate records and preparing reports for legal action.
• Gving evidence in court.
However, my experience with Eagle County Health and Human Services has been this:
• The Eagle county Department of Health and Human Services does not have a policies and procedures manual.
n They are grossly insufficient with keeping records and documentation that is critical when going to court.
• Their court reports have not contained the complete facts and often had omissions so that an attempt at reunification could continue.
• They have no understanding of the rights and laws pertaining to foster parents and more importantly foster children.
• There is too much concern, resources, time and energy being offered to the adults who put these children in harm's way.
• And,Health and Human Services is more concerned to reunify a child with family than to put that child's needs and safety first. A quote from an Eagle County caseworker in a letter to the editor March 7, 2009: “As the caseworker, one of my biggest responsibilities is to do everything in my power to reunify children back with their parents.”
Some of our foster children have been fortunate to have a success story. Some of the children were reunified with their parents and, yes, it was the right thing. But unfortunately, the story is not the same for all of our children.
Health and Human Services did so many outrageously wrong things on so many levels with several of the children who were placed in our home.
I know first hand and with more than one of the children we have had in our home that reunification should have never even been considered. I know that many people, including Health and Human Services, feel that reunification should be paramount, so I ask that anyone who does not agree with my statement that reunification is not always the best solution to please become a foster parent and get back with me in a year or two after having some broken and battered children in your home.
Tell me how you feel about having to give a newborn child drugs so that she hopefully will be able to come off the drugs that were in her system when she was born so that she does not go through withdrawal but still has to have visitation with a parent still using drugs. I can tell you what it is like to have a 4-month-old come into my home in a body cast from the chest down with broken bones. The outrageous stench coming from the cast and having to go against a caseworker that stated that I did not have permission to go to All Children's Hospital to have the cast checked. I went anyway.
She had sores throughout her legs that were infected. A new cast was placed on her tiny body. She eventually went home to her parents.
You cannot begin to understand the heartache of seeing the overwhelmingly obvious neglect of a child with special needs, her feeding tube being removed because it was inconvenient for a parent. And yet, she gets returned to her family and was in “the system” for five and a half years.
Health and Human Services has called me difficult. If the department defines difficult as me fighting for the lives and rights of these children and making the department accountable and bringing these outrageous stories to light, then may I be the most difficult member of the Eagle County community. If the law states that reunification must be attempted in all cases, then the law needs to be changed.
To all of the foster children that have been in our home. You are often in my thoughts and always in my prayers. I am sorry for those of you I could not keep safe as you continue through a system that is so severely broken and clearly not working for many of you. Please continue to be strong and know that I will continue to fight to get you safe and keep you safe.
I would like thank my daughter, Chelsea, for welcoming the 13 children we have fostered into our home like brothers and sisters. I am so very proud of you. To my husband, Pete, we could not have done foster care if not for your dedication to your family, to your work and to the children in foster care. I love you both.
To everyone who calls Eagle County home, these children need our help. I will soon be calling on all of you to help me help them. Please consider being a foster parent for these children as difficult as it is and, if at all possible, please make a donation to the Rocky Mountain Children's Law Center. Our children need them to be able to continue their great work. Rocky Mountain Children's Law Center 1325South Colorado Blvd. #308 Denver, CO 80222. RockyMountainChildrensLawCenter.org
Kelly Coyle Paulsen
